


the silhouette of a human brain

by TheTartWitch



Series: One-shots of AUs [24]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Amnesia, Charles goes into a coma after Erik puts the coin through Shaw's brain, Charles is suffering, Charles keeps erasing everyone's memory, Coma, Erik and Raven are searching for his mind, Gen, Poor Andrew, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator, he's got a Charles hiding in the back of his head, the fight ends as soon as Erik realizes Charles is down, this is not the first time they've found him, which attached itself to a random soldier on one of the ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 11:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14212200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: “Andrew,” says the woman finally, and he feels a momentary flash of irritation, an emotion he hasn’t felt in something like months: that isn’t my name.





	the silhouette of a human brain

He turns up his coat collar, attention catching on the display glass of a storefront. A woman stares back, her hair a bright red in the musty grey of the late afternoon on the street. Beside her is a man, tall and dark and sharp. Something inside him thrills in recognition, something he’s never felt before and just as quickly can’t remember. He turns to walk away, one eye locked perpetually on them as they fall into step beside him, footsteps matching as they are wont to do. The woman’s face is pinked from the early spring breeze, still carrying the bite of winter’s frost. 

He doesn’t say anything. Somehow, he knows why they’re here and has no interest in having this conversation. They’re achingly familiar. 

“Andrew,” says the woman finally. They’ve reached his door and he’s yet to say a word or acknowledge their presence at all. The man’s right eye twitches; he knows the incredible restraint this exhibits. They are both watching him carefully, as though expecting a reaction, and he feels a momentary flash of irritation, an emotion he hasn’t felt in something like months:  _ that isn’t my name _ . But he doesn’t say a word and soon enough the feeling is melting in that half-nothingness he’s wrapped around himself.  _ Ever since the beach... _ he shakes his head.

What beach? He’s never been to the beach.

It’s been too long. The woman’s eyes are fever-bright. The man’s mouth curls slowly into a crescent, a clever cat that finally caught the bird. 

“ _ Charles… _ ” She hisses, predatory. There is a sudden flutter in his mind, a pinch, a tug, and he gasps, a hand rising to his forehead. There is an agonizing pain, something shoving through his head, and he cries out, falls against his front door. His hand clutches for the knob but he hears, from far away, the click of the lock re-engaging. The man’s smile is all teeth. In his mind’s eye, a coin is rising through the air, through someone’s head -  _ his  _ head - and he is the pain, the pain is the entirety of his existence.

He pushes himself away from the door, dives for the man’s throat -  _ Erik _ \-  _ Erik’s  _ throat - it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that he had to suffer when there was another way, Erik, please. 

Erik catches his fists easily in one wide hand, another winding around his waist, and he is shouting terrible things and sobbing and there is an ache in the back of his mind like someone dying over and over and over again and a humming noise like a low scream. 

All of a sudden he wants them to leave. He is quiet and still, staring into Erik’s eyes but feeling the woman’s - Raven’s - on his back and wanting them to leave so he can forget again, so he doesn’t have to remember the feeling of death and terror and betrayal or see the look of pain and regret in Erik’s stare or Raven’s guilt and desperation. He doesn’t know them and he doesn’t want to know them, and maybe someday he’ll forgive them for something that didn’t happen to him but to someone else in someone else’s head. 

They seem to realize something is wrong because his fists have stopped moving and he is just laying in Erik’s arms with wide, blank eyes, but there’s no time for them to take action before he is reaching - not him, but someone else, someone deep and hidden and still hurting, still terrified - into their minds and erasing himself, the memory of this encounter. They never found him, never even thought to look for him here, and their eyes filter before they clear, blank, and step away, Erik’s hands falling from his body to hang limply at his side, fiddles with his watch, run through his hair. Raven’s red hair flickers into blonde, her eyes to blue. She is still the pale cream she uses in the streets, the freckles on her cheeks and fading down her neck still in the same constellations he remembers from all those years ago. He knows, somewhere in someone else’s memory, that there is a starburst of freckles on the bottom of her left foot, seven of them, forming a base silhouette of the human brain as seen in a painting when he was very young. It’s an homage to him, to that other him still stuck on a beach somewhere, an homage she likely doesn’t even remember the reason for anymore. 

They’ve forgotten him in this instance, suddenly in the city for the sights, the others of their kind hidden away in the trundling alleyways and stone sidewalks, behind windows and walls, and they turn from him without even seeing him. He watches them go until they are around a corner and he can no longer see them. A woman watches curiously from the next street corner as he straightens himself, pulls his hood up, combs his hair to lay flat with his fingers, but her eyes glaze the next moment, and she forgets him in favor of hurrying to get the bread she’s just remembered needing for that night’s dinner. He spends a moment, breathing and gathering himself emotionally, mentally. He feels that other him retreat slowly into the back of his skull, the base of his skin, the ends of his fingers.

In the next, he is hustling inside, wondering why he’s spent so long lingering outside his door - locked, though he could have sworn he remembered unlocking it, the feel of the keys in his hand - in the bite of the wind. As he hangs up his coat on the hook inside, there is a flash of something, a small subtle burst, and he no longer remembers even that thought.

There is nothing but a shop’s blank window-front and the pale gleam of light flickering on coins that go dull and brown in his dreams that night. There is nothing out of the ordinary at all. 

He has still never been to the beach.

**Author's Note:**

> Charles has not recovered. He couldn't escape the pain in his own head, so he ran and ended up randomly inside poor Andrew's head, where he hides and tries to quiet the constant screaming and horror and still can't quite escape its ever-present cacophony. Erik and Raven remember and find him over and over again but each time he is angry and scared and in pain still and sends them away again, memories wiped but search never-ending.


End file.
